Trump's Project 2025: Up Close and Personal-Chapter 3: The Death of Expertise.
The Bill Press Pod
BP Pods
4.7 • 601 Ratings
🗓️ 15 April 2025
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
While Bill is on a research and writing sabbatical for the next 5 weeks we decided it’s important to revisit the horrors we laid out in our Project 2025 podcast series, Trump's Project 2025: Up Close and Personal – and tie them to what’s actually happened so far. In Chapter 3, the fact-based fictional story of Dr. Yvette Hardman and JJ Newsom depicts the dismantling of expertise and science-based decision making in the federal government under a second Trump administration guided by Project 2025. Dr. Hardman, an experienced infectious disease expert, is removed from her position at the CDC and replaced by JJ Newsom, an unqualified political loyalist with no relevant experience. This reflects Project 2025's plan to fill government positions with partisan appointees rather than nonpartisan experts. The new administration, in this fictional account and now in real life, rejects science-based pandemic response recommendations from Dr. Hardman instead prioritizing political and economic considerations over public health. This aligns with Project 2025's directives to limit the CDC's ability to make public health recommendations. The story highlights the Trump administration's hostility towards science and the displacement of experienced civil servants. Overall, the narrative illustrates how a second Trump term guided by Project 2025 would undermine the role of expertise and independent scientific advice in government, with potentially disastrous consequences for public health and safety.
We'd like to thank all the artists who volunteered their time to make this episode: CCH Pounder, Richard Schiff and Jason Kravits who read the chapters and Omid Abtahi, Laurie Burke and Joanne Carducci who did the voices. Sound design by Marilys Ernst and Jonathan Moser. Trump's Project 2025: Up Close and Personal was written by David Pepper and produced by Pepper, Melissa Jo Peltier and Jay Feldman and is a production of Ovington Avenue Productions and The Bill Press Pod.
Today's Bill Press Pod is supported by The Laborers' International Union of North America. More information at LIUNA.org.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, good friends. Welcome back to the Bill Press Pod and our new look at Project 2025, |
| 0:13.1 | now that we're three months into Trump 2. Yes, we saw all of this coming before the election, |
| 0:20.2 | but it's even worse than we feared. |
| 0:23.0 | Donald Trump and Elon Musk are tearing down our democratic institutions, just as we warned in our Project 2025 podcast last fall. |
| 0:32.2 | The courts, the media, foreign aid, health care, you name it. |
| 0:36.0 | They're undermining and dismantling it. And they claim |
| 0:39.6 | they're just getting started. That's why we decided to revisit our Project 2025 series, |
| 0:46.8 | once we once called fiction, is now reality faster than we imagined. So while I'm off on a brief research break in Europe, we're updating |
| 0:57.6 | these episodes to show exactly how Trump's playbook is playing out. Joined again by the author |
| 1:03.1 | David Pepper. We'll connect the dots between Project 2025 and the damage already done. Our goal is |
| 1:10.4 | to expose Trump's anti-democratic agenda, inspire resistance, |
| 1:15.6 | and ensure a total rejection of Trump and MAGA in 2026. In this fact-based fictional account of life |
| 1:23.4 | under a second Trump regime, the personal stories of people affected are told through the eyes of |
| 1:29.1 | reporters for the fictional magazine Capital Monthly. Today's episode tells the story of what would |
| 1:35.2 | happen when a longtime civil servant and disease specialist comes up against the unqualified |
| 1:40.6 | partisans recruited and hired for a second Trump regime. Sound familiar? It's read for us by |
| 1:47.7 | CCH Pounder. Chapter 3 Capital Monthly, Yvette Cunningham, Washington, D.C. |
| 2:03.6 | You've got to be kidding me. |
| 2:10.8 | The boyish, bleached blonde Chip Manson barked over the large rectangular table where a dozen people were sitting. |
| 2:14.6 | Shut down the entire facility. No way in hell are we going to do that? |
| 2:16.8 | You want to turn the whole country upside down? |
| 2:19.6 | It was just the first of ten recommendations Yvette Ardman planned to make at that meeting |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BP Pods, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BP Pods and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.